Various thermal melting apparatuses such as solder processing apparatuses and solder ball forming apparatuses for thermally melting various process objects including solder have been used recently. More specifically, certain thermally melting process apparatuses have been used for enabling solder processing and solder ball forming process using carbonic acids such as formic acid instead of flux (Patent Documents 1 and 2).
It is required for these thermally melting process apparatuses to shorten the time between melting to cooling from the standpoint of improving the speed of the operation. Based on this standpoint, the apparatus disclosed by Patent Document 1 provides a cooling plate in a liftable manner beneath the heating plate having a heating means so that the cooling plate can be lifted to contact the hot plate in order to force-cool the substrate being soldered.